I haven't made any arrangements as yet and I'm still not sure what to do. Sports Tours are advertising self drive packages at around £600! That's £140 entry and the rest is a seriously crap 2* hotel. I just can't justify paying that amount - £1200 for the two of us - that's more than our family holiday for the 6 of us (plus babysitter) will cost.
I'm seriously considering driving down and camping en route. We could then book a hotel for the evening after we'd finished the etape - that could be anywhere really as long as it was somewhere on the road back to England. Campsite in Montelimar is 12 euro for the night - seriously tempting compared to the alternative. There is one problem with this amazing plan - we have never camped before and don't have a decent tent.
Cyclomundo (went with them last year - excellent) are yet to publish their package prices so we won't make a decision until we see all the options.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
We did entry only, a gite from Gites de France and an overnight Eurotunnel/Ferry. Even with tolls and diesel it cost a lot less than an organised package
Hi Karen.
The campsites in France are super in my experance and well worth considering. If you fancy a nice room the day before the etape I am sure you would get somewhere if you were prepared to go out of town a little by car.
All the best for the Etape in 2009 and hope that your training goes well.
We've camped in France too, though french campsites often don't calm down until gone 11pm, so not the best preparation the night before the Etape. Not that I slept much anyway.
Consider www.gites-de-france.com, they currently have about 3 pages of properties from 350Euros upward for Etape week, if you select a radius of 20km from Montelimar (good warmup distance?) That's who we went with this year. Remember, though, that you will have to phone to confirm arrival details etc, so it helps to have a french speaker around.
It also only gives Sunday to acclimatise before the event, but you do get 4-5 days afterward to recover. Failing that, we have a couple of tents.........but even I didn't fancy camping and an etape!
cheers guys, I'm working on it. I'm definitely not going to go for the package option now - just can't justify that expense - so I'm looking at campsites and gites (thinks for the link Clive). I started to wonder what the hell I was doing this for again but then looked on the cyclosport website, saw the preview video and got a bit misty eyed at the Tom Simpson memorial. I'll have to try and post that on the blog somehow.
Thanks again - I may be asking you experienced etapers lots of questions in the coming months :-)
Post a Comment